Thank you very much for your commitment to spend the last six years in our wonderful country and contributing so much to the employment of fully-fledged Australian citizens. In particular we thank you for the $300,000 you have paid, without which (we’re sure you can appreciate) government ministers’ superannuation funds would undoubtedly suffer and Mr Carr’s beloved wife would have been unable to travel on so many exciting overseas trips.

While we sympathise with your plight, we would like to point out the very, very small print on your student visa application, which clearly states:

“The Australian Government, wholly and without reservation, retains the right, after receipt of extortionate student fees, to discriminate against the applicant by imposing further costs upon him/her for the continuation of his/her training while attending to sick Australian citizens.

Any cost associated with high-skill based learning in this wonderful country will be borne, solely and without legal recourse or whingeing, by the applicant.

Should the applicant decide, at any point, to discontinue training in this wonderful country, and flee to another, more reasonably priced country in which to complete their degree, the applicant acknowledges that, if at any point he/she decides to return in a professional capacity to this wonderful country, he/she will have to pay further extortionate fees to bring his/her degree in line with Australian standards.

Until such time as the applicant’s already high skill levels are raised to a satisfactory standard to meet our ridiculously strict requirements, the applicant agrees that he/she will happily enter the transport industry and drive taxis to accommodate Australian citizens.”

Yours truly,Department of Health

CC: Department of Education, Department of Immigration, Hon. Bob Carr

Posted by scribbler, Friday, 26 October 2012 8:56:09 AM

Thank you for studying in Australia. I take it the reason you wanted to become a Doctor was to the help sick people in your home country. Yes, we do have a shortage of Doctors in Australia. That is due to the fact that the Medical Board likes to keep the shortage so they can keep their fees as high as possible.

I assumed that when overseas students are finished their studies that they would return to their country & help their own sick countrymen. I know that the doctor to patient ratio in China is much higher than it is in Australia.

Studying in Australia isn't supposed to be used as some sort of defacto immigration scheme.

Posted by Jayb, Friday, 26 October 2012 9:40:23 AM

Let me see. We are stealing doctors from places like Bangaladesh andNigeria to work in our country areas, because the Libs cut doctortraining years ago and we now pay the price.

Why can't some of these students spend time working in the country?

Posted by Yabby, Friday, 26 October 2012 9:50:40 AM

Why make foreign interns PAY?

Because they are part of an immigration system that $gives to the rich via bigger markets but subtracts from the average citizen via externalisation of costs, via gridlock in everything from social services and stability to INFRASTRUCTURE costs.

Immigrants come to Australia and xcause huge demands for more infrastructure which Australian taxpayers have PAID for.

Better that immigrants pay $300,000 per person to make Australia fairer and friendlier for all to USE. In the meantime while Governments learn this LESSON in TRUTH, those immigrants long-term more capable of paying FOR that infrastructure do so by particularly paying for their internships. Internships that not only involve free work but most importantly involve raising the living standards of those doctors in most cases from abject poverty in their failed homelands to wealth and prestige in Australia.

Its not too much to ask when the alternative is that these doctors will help turn Australia into a failed infrastructure-poor-nation JUST like the one they came from.

If Australian taxpayers or their "billy lids" (kids) want to raise their living standards they must pay $300,000 HECS. Migrants are getting that privilege FREE staight off the plane or leaky boat. Make them pay their HECS.

The only ones with QUI BONO are politicians and wealthy marketeers who are increasingly in the form of foreign investors.

This is CHEATING on EVERY Australian citizen and ALL our current politicians should be repeatedly voted out of power till they realise the ERROR of their ways.

In the long-run freeloading-migrants will be better for this stance because they too are feeling the frustration of lack of infrastructure.

But can they own up to their own guilt in the problem and begin to PAY their share willingly and with PRIDE in a better nation than they left behind.

Australians cannot afford to allow ourselves to be enslaved by scurrilous politicians who only seek to rort them via paying over and over for the infrastructure they paid for years and years ago.

Posted by KAEP, Friday, 26 October 2012 11:10:13 AM

Continuing>

And for what? So those same out of touch fools can strut the world stage in Carr and Rudd luxury while Australians get shot in Greenacre?

If Australians wanted DICTATORS we would have voted for IDI AMIN. Slipping in a vile O'Greineresque dictatorship government model using wrong $footed IMMIGRATION is a crime against the Constitution of this land.

Make the interns pay and teach them it is in THEIR interest not to have their new homeland turn into a dictatorship like the ones they so hastily fled.

Posted by KAEP, Friday, 26 October 2012 11:10:50 AM

jayb:"Studying in Australia isn't supposed to be used as some sort of defacto immigration scheme."

Sorry, but that is just naive. This is exactly what it is, the Howard government set it up so that they could have young middle class immigrants educated to Australian standards immigrate to Australia, and it wouldn't cost us anything. A higher degree from an Australian institution counts a long way towards permanent residency.